The contributions in this special issue explore reconfigurations of marriages and weddings in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia through the last decades. Part 2: The material dimension: exploring marriage as consumption. Contributions: Not marrying in South Africa: consumption, aspiration and the new middle class (Deborah James); The struggle for marriage: elite and non-elite weddings in rural Namibia (Julia Pauli & Francois Dawids); The tent versus lobola: marriage, monetary intimacies and the new face of responsibility in Botswana (Rijk van Dijk). Part 3: the power dimension: exploring marriage and crisis. Contributions: Marriage, kinship and childcare in the aftermath of AIDS: rethinking 'orphanhood' in the South African Lowveld (Isak Niehaus); Rights, violence and the marriage of confusion: re-emerging bride abduction in South Africa (W.J. (Jaco) Smit). Part 1 in: Anthropology Southern Africa, vol. 39, no.4, 2016. [ASC Leiden abstract]